Review

Review Date: 26-September-10
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

When I think of Wall Street I see hyper-focused guys in precise attire zooming in on targets like hawks on field mice and multitasking with laptops and hand-held devices. So it strikes me as ironic that a movie about Wall Street such as Money Never Sleeps could be so loosey goosey. Oliver Stone's follow-up to his 1987 hit is devoid of precision. Like the original, it centers on a young man, played by Shia LaBeouf, who must decide what sort of person he is when torn between love and family on one side and greed and shady dealings on the other. Yet unlike the original, Money Never Sleeps does not nail down the protagonist's conflict or the lessons he learns, or, for that matter, the conflicts or lessons of his antagonists. It feels like shooting began on the set before the screenwriters determined which characters to keep and in which direction to take them. Much of the plot is unintelligible to people like me with no understanding of or interest in hard-core finance, and this is a flaw; the movie should include just enough business detail to drive the action or else take time to explain it for a narrative or educational purpose. But the movie squanders its time. For example, one of Stone's visual flourishes is a diagram about LaBeouf's pet fusion project, the details of which are irrelevant. This conjures up the image of a studio head saying, "Liberals love Stone, so let's cram this picture full of environmental crap!" And so they did.

While I would not recommend that anyone lose two and a half hours on this flick, I must say I derived some enjoyment from it after I gave up on getting anything out of the plot. This is because I enjoyed watching the actors, with the exception of Carey Mulligan as LaBeouf's fiancée, who merely weeps in all her scenes. (She is stuck in the familiar women-are-sensitive-and-grounded role used to emphasize that men need to grow.) I have said before that I hope to see LaBeouf mature into a star of substance, and he proves his mettle opposite older, tougher-looking co-stars: Michael Douglas, who reprises his Oscar-winning role as the predatory Gordon Gekko (and the hero's future father-in-law); Josh Brolin, who glowers as an equally predatory head of a major bank; and Frank Langella, who has a small part as a father figure. Susan Sarandon pops in as the mother, a pleasant appearance albeit one that the screenwriters would have done well to excise from a later draft. (Contributing to the smorgasbord effect, Stone throws in a reunion between Douglas and Charlie Sheen, who played the protagonist in the original film. What the audience gets from this is that the last 20 years have been much kinder to Douglas.) Actorly appeal does not make a movie, however, so Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps fails to pay sufficient dividends.

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